Wednesday, September 17, 2008

 

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Due Dates

We finished watching Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes today. If you missed it this morning, I'll be showing it again in L-202E from 1-2:50, first hour. You can join my afternoon class. You have to have seen the film to do the essay. I have an alternative assignment. It is an interview with Dyson by Byron Hurt, (published in Dyson's Know What I Mean) the director of the film. It's a long article, and while interesting is complex and expansive on the topic of violence, sexism, homophobia, and masculinity in hip hop culture. This essay is available to all students who want to expand their scholarship and information on the topic.See http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/

The Essay Due Dates
The topics are: masculinity (hyper or otherwise), sexism, violence (misogyny)
First draft: 9/18 bring to class
Second draft: 9/22 bring to class
Final draft: 9/23 posted with planning: initial planning sheet, and outline

The essay you turn in tomorrow needs to come accompanied with an outline, an initial planning sheet, and of course the essay. I suggest you develop three thesis statements and then decide what your argument will be and then start. Include the title of the film (article for those doing the alternative assignment), in the introductory paragraph.

Essay content
The essay need not be any longer than 3-4 paragraphs. I'd like students to include in each paragraph evidence from a source: film, article, song. Use paraphrase, direct quotes and a block quote. Find a song that illustrates your point whether that is: sexism, misogyny, other violence, homophobia...you can also quote an artist on your topic.

The website for the film will give you resources you can use to write this essay. See Research in Hacker. Pay attention to using signal phrases and in-text citations.

The essay should be 500 words minimally.

Comments:
How do dominating cultural aesthetics come to exist and what affect do they have on behavior? Its probably a part of human nature to create and to follow aesthetic trends. Aethetics are ideals of beauty. They represent, in its pure form, something that is admirable. Thus, they possess the power and ability to shape human behavior. In a way we look up to them. We see in them something beautiful, something to cherish. In ancient Rome, a precursor to American culture, celebrities of the day were the gladiatorial fighters (gladiatōrēs, "swordsmen" or "one who uses a sword," from gladius, "sword") who were forced to engage in combat with wild animals and amongst each other, often to the death, all for the entertainment of the spectator. Perhaps the Romans were possessed by the sheer brutality and fervor of these games; the very aesthetics represented and captured through the form of this bizarre gladiatorial frenzy. Perhaps through these games they sought to find a way to release themselves in a complete surrender of inhibitions. Could this have been a symptom of the decadence that ultimately plunged the Roman empire to its cataclysmal demise? Was it ultimately this decadence and appreciation of savagery that caused them to destroy themselves just like gladiators they once vicariously made destroy each other? It would seem that the ideals they had worshipped had played a significantly strong hand in what would ultimately become of them. In modern America, ancient Rome's logical successor, there are also several aesthetic trends flowing throughout its culture and people. Among them there is Hip Hop music, an art form formerly headquarters to a vast and diverse array of aesthetic values and ideals; now commonly visited as a run-down shanty of only a few dominating aesthetic trends characterized primarily by - though not entirely limited to - exaggerations of toughness, hyper-masculinity, aggression, mysogyny, and materialism.

How did these aesthetic trends within the musical genre of Hip Hop come to exist and what effects - if any - might they have on people and behavior? in Byron Hurt's fast moving and hard punching documentary, "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" this question is explored through his own personal experiences within Hip Hop music as well as through the lens Hip Hop's key players, from the aspiring rappers, to the industry insiders. Central to his journey is the pivotal question: why is there such strong emphasis on hyper-masculine behavior seemingly running along the lenghth of the entire genre's under belly to start with? Hurt believes that hyper masculinity may be something that penetrates all the way down to the underlying layer of all American culture and is not just a phenomena exclusive to Hip Hop music. He offers:

"I think the way you see manhood portrayed in hip hop is deeply entrenched in American culture, not just hip hop culture. Like if you watch cowboy movies, gangster movies, action movies – you can see the same elements of manhood and masculinity in those areas that you will see in hip hop. What distinguishes hip hop from the rest of the culture is that hip hop is so blatant. Also, with hip hop you have a lot of young men who come from poverty, and other situations, that make this quest for hyper-masculinity seem much more essential."

Perhaps its true that these aesthetic ideals can be found running through many different aspects of our culture. They are, after all, simply the extensions of the behaviors and values that can be found somewhere within all of us. These ideals float around loosely in the deep waters of our own humanity. They are extracted from us, condensed, and presented back in a shiny new repackagaged format ready to purchase. But not every human quality deserves idolization. The same can be said of Hip Hop.

Hip Hop first took flight on a street with no name somewhere in the crumbling New York detritus of a South Bronx ghetto. It was here where it first learned how to sing its song. You could hear Hip Hop blaring out rebelliously from the parks. You could find Dj Kool Herc cutting and scratching old vinyl records together on his two turn-tables creating coherent and rhythmic break beats from the chaos of his energetic hands sliding up and down and everywhere else. There were no rappers then; only masters of ceremony - Or M.C. - to get the crowd hype. Hip Hop soon expanded though, spreading out to cover different issues of complexity. Its child like gaze and party music innocence soon splintering into many varrying aesthetics with the growth and evolution of the M.C. from mere crowd organizer to full flegded rhyme preformer. This thereby giving a voice to many who had never known what it was like to have one before. There were many different kinds of rappers who rapped about many different kinds of things. One variety of rapper in particular represented the harsh surroundings of the impoverished streets that had created Hip Hop. Coming alive in the form of beats and rhymes, he was the physical embodiment of the alienation endured by an environment that had been all but abandonded and forgetten by the rest of society. Author, Kevin Powell (as featured in the documentary "Hip Hop: Beyond beats and Rhymes") explains that environments, such as the South Bronx which had gave glorious rise to Hip Hop, were by design intended to alter and supress the human condition. The rampant availability of foreign produced drugs, the lop-sided drug laws which effectively kneed more and more bodies into the gears of the prison system thereby creating a prison culture, the proliferation of liquor stores peppering city block upon city block, and perhaps the most crippling of all an outdated and ultimately fruitless education system that does not encourage development of the identity; the foundation by which all knowledge flows from. What sort of mentalities and aesthetics might come up in what Kevin Powell had tagged a "forced" environment designed to foster negativity and poverty of the soul, where ignorance is handed out for free yet where hope is all too expensive?

If aesthetics are rooted ultimately in deeper human elements that are selected and propped up to be reflected back to us, then the aesthetics - of violence, materialistic obbession, homophobia, and mysogyny - that are seen within Hip Hop must be a reflection of the symptoms this forced environment encourages. This is the stage where the actors are forced to play; The arena where the galdiators are forced to fight. Byron Hurt refers to this as, "the quest for hyper masculinity, " where people must blindly dawn a misguided armor of toughness and agression. This aesthetic is worshipped and promoted through Hip Hop music. Perhaps then its time for a new aesthetic? One where knowledge and enlightenment are looked up to in deep veneration and high reverence. In the deep waters of our humanity these things exist too. To do this we must recognize and isolate the thing that has been selecting the negative qualities which also lay within those waters, selecting them, and then propping them up to reflect back to us in the form of an aesthetic ideal. We must remove its ugly hand before we are lead blindly into our own destruction; before we are lead blindly by the wrong aesthetic ideals.

I wanted to add this link:

its to a song called Fear not of Man by Mos Def inspired by Fela Kuti's Fear Not For Man

here is the link I think. The lyrics capture the essence of Hip Hop better than an essay could

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BEg38-bWY8
 
Jakaila Scott


Byron Hurts Hip Hop Essay

What is homophobia? Homophobia is an irrational fear and discrimination against homosexuals, and the homosexual behavior and culture as well.





What is homophobia? When asked, most of our fellow Americans would say that it’s a phobia of homosexuals, which in a way is partially true. It’s not only the fact of being “afraid” of homosexuality; it’s also the acceptance of the ignorance around homosexuality as a whole. As human beings we tend to discriminate and disapprove of what we lack true knowledge about.
 
Dion Cade
English 201B
8:00 to 8:50

Male privilege

Males: one of Gods first creations. Why do they think they are so dominant? Is it because God made them first? No matter where a person goes, there will always be a patriarchal society around them whether they notice it or not. Society has grown a lot more patriarchal because of hip hop. More men try to act tough to get respect from other people including the ones that they do not know. Byron Hurt, a film maker and an anti-sexist, has seen enough music videos and listens to enough of the music to know that there is way too much violence with men always being the cause and the fact that women are always scantily clad and being disrespected in these videos. One video with Nelly portrayed that women can be even be bought and sold. The impact of hip hop on society is huge and it affects everyone. Much of the music that comes out is filled with nothing but violence in which rappers talk about nothing but shooting and stabbing someone and having sex with some woman. Many people hear this and figure this is what everyone wants to hear and what everyone pays for. So they are influenced to do the same thing. There are many stereotypes that go along with being a man and hip hop helps portray them, which affects a lot of young men whether it makes them want to go along with it or speak out against it.
The people that go with today’s hip hop music are the ones who like all of the violence and apply it to there own music which expands that particular style, or people who just like to listen to it. The rappers that apply this to there music just keep everything the same. The same subjects are rapped about with no originality or uniqueness. Rap music has shown just how dominant men think they are. In a lot of the songs, they reference women as being “bitches” “hoes” or “sluts” and saying that they would do anything with them. Soulja Boy has a song called “Pimp Slap Dat Hoe” in which he says: “Pimp slap dat hoe man, show her what you know man, give her what she need man rite side her face man.” Many rappers say they treat them like animals, saying that they just have sex with them than just move on to the next. This is what many people like to listen to unfortunately and this does sell. A lot of people relate to some of the things that these rappers say especially if they are from the ghetto. Rappers threatening people makes them tough and some of them will not do what they say they will do which relates into more threats coming from other rappers. This is called beef when one rapper has a problem with another and they constantly disrespect each other on their songs. Sometimes a beef can be fatal like Tupac’s and Biggy’s and other times it can be just name calling until finally the situation is solved like Nas and Jay-Z’s beef.
The people that go against today’s hip hop music are the ones that are looking for justice and change to make society better, especially in the black community. They are tired of hearing the same lyrics expressed in different ways about killing people and violence in general. These are people who, if they are artists, like to express the positive subjects in hip hop and put more originality in the music to make it better and full of variety. They want to send positive messages in people’s ears and tell them to stop the violence and convince and influence people to be more like them instead of the artists that promote violence. In Boogie Down Productions song called “Stop the Violence” he says:
We gotta put our heads together, and stop the violence
Cause real bad boys move in silence
When you’re in a club, you come to chill out
Not watch someone’s blood just spill out

Many kids listen to violent music and they hear all of the violence and profanity and start thinking that all of these things are ok so if they do not have someone to tell them that these things are wrong. They end up growing up off of the concepts that they listen to and applying them to there life. People who are against today’s hip hop want society to know that all of this violence is reaching their kids and there must be something that needs to be done.
Hip hop shows the different stereotypes about men and how people portray men and it affects everyone in different ways. Many people have come to believe that what is said on a rappers song can not always be true. Rappers may say that they have done one thing or another but no one can say for sure that they have or haven’t done these things unless they were always with them. Rich men and football players always show how tough they are and one reason why they may act like that is because of the hip hop music that they have heard. An article from pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop said: “Such violence has become so pervasive-not just in popular cultures such as music, movies, and videogames, but also in military and sports-that many Americans have become desensitized to it, supporting violent culture through consumerism, even unwittingly”
The sense of being strong and disrespecting anyone around a person is always going through the male mind in today’s society because hip hop is heard and thought of even though one person or more may not want to even listen to hip hop. It is always played in someone’s car or at parties so the affect is great. But what some people are trying to do is neutralize that effect and erase the stereotypes because not all men act violent and want to diminish the stereotypes for there lives.
 
Thesis: Masculinity is something deeply rooted in you as a young man some boys are taught false masculinity and some are taught true masculinity. Thanks to the media young men of the future have been brainwashed to what true masculinity really is. What is the real definition of it and why is it important?

The subject of this paper is masculinity and how it plays a role in society.
I want to write about this subject some my audience can get a clear vision of true masculinity.
My audiences I want to reach are young men from the time they are able to talk and understand as well as the young ladies of my generation
I would like my paper to answer the question that all men ask themselves, do I have true masculinity or am I brain washed my the medias definition of masculinity.
I will use the problem and solution strategy in my essay.

Masculinity, what is the real definition, what is masculinity and why is it important? Taking care if your responsibilities, respecting people, treating women like the queens they are, even when they see themselves less than human. Or is it beating on women, calling them Bitches and Hoes robbing people, hurting people?
Through the media America has been brained washed by this fake ideology of masculinity. Some men believe it’s important to be hard. Men size each other up through the five Makers of Manhood. What is Masculinity and why is it important?
As I sat back and watched Beyond Beats and Rhymes a film by the phenomenal Byron Hurts. All I heard was oppression, anger, men emasculating other men, challenging each other based on their stratification in life. Not one person on the film that rapped a line had anything positive to say about the next person, everything was about violence. One guy said “nobody want to hear that positive shit”, I love hearing uplifting music from artist such as Public Enemy, De la soul, Common the best rapper of all time. Most of the rappers that are black and brown bring negative music to the communities. Most music labels are not color owned, therefore we have these non color people who own these record labels continuing to hold the black and brown communities down with this entire negative mumble jumble they call music. The communities are already oppressed. Encouraging them to rap about shooting and killing each other, money, guns, sexy women it does not help the people to see the truth from fake to real. There is no possible way you can make the connection between media masculinity and the real mans masculinity.

In the videos produced the main thing you see are beautiful women with close to nothing on, shaking their butts, not having enough clothing material to cover the upper part of the body being sexually victimized. Men slapping women’s behinds pouring liquor on them, when watching these videos all I see is dehumanization, seeing the men treat women like slave owners treated black people back in the day. When blacks were sold, the white people would lick their faces; slap their behinds and touching all over their body parts. It’s the same thing today. The music that is put out today is not uplifting at all. It’s filled with violence, telling their audience how many girls they can have, cars, houses, men their going to kill. This all boils down to “misperception of masculinity”, the toughest guy get the most respect. I strongly believe that’s backwards! All of the above is not real masculinity. Men size each other up by the 5 Markers of Manhood. Power control you have over some people, being wealthy how much money you have, status are you living large, sexy women, you can only be a completion, and violence how hard you look in front of other men. To a man if you have what he wants sexy women, money, power, wealth, status, and show people you are violent if you have all these tings you are considered the man your masculinity is never in question. This is not the definition of a real man let alone his masculinity!
A real man handles his responsibility; takes care his home makes sure his family has everything they need to survive on the day to day bases. He treats a woman with respect no matter how disrespectful she is to him, he never disrespects his elders. Go to work everyday come home and spend time with the family. a man that goes beyond his reach to help those in need.
This is what masculinity should be based on not how much money one has or how many women they have slept with or what they can buy with all that money. They have not giving back to the community or the schools. Attention all boys and men, look inside yourself and see what your masculinity looks like, are you making a solution or adding to the negative of real masculinity?

Tipton
English 201 B
 
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